The Relevance of Crowding Experiments to Urban Studies

Abstract

The experimental study of human crowding is one of the behavioral sciences’ fastest-growing areas of research. We come to this forum with two major interests. As social psychologists who have engaged in experimental work on crowding, we are concerned with the conduct and evaluation of these laboratory studies. As urban sociologists, we have noted with dismay the poverty of theory in this young research tradition. As our contribution, we hope to offer a constructive critique drawn largely from the vantage point of over 50 years of urban theory and research. Our main focus will concern the following question: What do the experimental studies of crowding have to do with the understanding of the social-psychological nature of urban life? Our proposition is that thus far experimentalists have ignored the central issues in urbanism and have given inadequate answers to this question.

Keywords

Personal Space Urban Study Urban Life City Life SOCIal Pathology

An earlier version of this paper was presented to a symposium on “Theoretical Developments Pertaining to Personal Space and Human Crowding,” at the Western Psychological Association meetings in San Francisco, April 27, 1974.

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